The White House has confronted questions for months about whether presidential pardons are effectively for sale. Those questions just got louder.
The White House has confronted questions for months about whether presidential pardons are effectively for sale.
Those questions are quite a bit louder now.
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-01-19T19:21:22.799Z
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/the-controversy-surrounding-trumps-pardons-goes-from-bad-to-worse
As the first year of Donald Trump’s second term progressed, and the list of scandalous presidential pardons grew, the White House confronted a question without modern precedent: Were pardons effectively for sale?....
Last week, these concerns reached a new level. The New York Times reported:
In late 2024, while [Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker] was facing felony bribery and other charges in the case, his daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.
In May, her father’s lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, who had served on Mr. Trump’s legal defense team, negotiated an unusually lenient deal with the Justice Department. Under the deal, which was authorized by a top Trump appointee, Mr. Herrera agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor campaign finance charge, disappointing career prosecutors who had pushed for a harsher sentence.
Two months later, Isabela Herrera donated another $1 million to MAGA Inc., culminating in a pardon from Trump late last week. (The White House claimed the political contributions did not lead to the pardon.)
The Times’ Peter Baker summarized the circumstances this way: “Her father faced bribery charges. She donated $2.5 million to a pro-Trump Super PAC.
Trump’s Justice Department gave her father a lenient deal, overruling prosecutors. She gave another $1 million. Now Trump has pardoned her dad.”....
Last fall, during a briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters
, “When it comes to pardons, the White House takes them with the utmost seriousness.” The president’s top spokesperson added that each pardon is subjected to “a very thorough review process,” conducted by a team of “qualified lawyers.”
I continue to believe this was one of the more unintentionally amusing things Leavitt has ever said.
As for the bigger picture, the bottom line appears increasingly unavoidable:
Trump is abusing his pardon power; he apparently knows that he’s abusing his pardon power; he knows that we know he’s abusing his pardon power; and he just doesn’t seem to care.
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